Wednesday, August 12, 2009

"THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS" AIN'T EVER GONNA BE A CAMPAIGN PROMISE:
Why U.S. Citizens, Leadership Are in Perpetual War with Each Other

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I do not, nor will I ever, trust anything in this great nation that slithers its way up through the shit-coated sewer that is partisan machinery and into the hallowed halls of Washington.

I trust not one Senator, not one member of the House. Those in the White House, in the Cabinet, those sketchy appointees and backroom reactionary poll-and-rhetoric speechwriters & policymakers, those deviants who make up the Campaign Finance Infrastructure more worthy of the label "Raiders of State" than "supporter" or "donor."

And trust me here, ye Party Loyalists and Pundits - I am in the Majority on this one, if "majority" still means anything to anyone.

Every policy and law proposed, thus, is treated as a flawed policy or law, produced by a corrupt system that will not ever be reformed without a massive disassembly of the two greatest terrorist threats to the Yet-to-Be-Free World - the Republican and Democratic parties.

Yes, they are. As were the Stalinists who "saved" the Soviets by forcing the defense of the Motherland through the Gulags, anti-unionism, forced economics, and speech suppression, as were the Pinochets and the Amins, the terrible Ivans and the Torquemadas and the Genghis Khans.

Seriously. I challenge anyone to name any two political organizations other than the former USSR or the People's Republic of China's monopolistic Communist Parties, that, since the end of the Second World War, have sponsored more dictators and madmen in the interest of its elite interests, oppressed more people into inhumanity and poverty in self-interest of its powerful, that have poisoned and polluted more of the world, that have lied to its own people and the world, that hold the global community hostage with a nuclear arsenal and massive military, through unaccountable policies and Cover-Your-Ass diplomacy.

I love my country too much to feel otherwise. Not its bureaucracies, not its myriad periods of government imperialism and fascism, its state-created censorship and mob rules of the elite and powerful. Not its politics, its propaganda-rigged elections, its Hero-Vs.-Heel closed-race puppet presidencies and governors supported by Dumbing Down Corporate Media and their Advertisers.

No, I love the PEOPLE of these United States, just as I love Mexicans, Canadians, pretty much all of North America, as brothers and sisters. As in WE, THE PEOPLE. The rest is just a struggle by a self-appointed wealth-and-power minority that, well, for decades, has only been able to hold power by tricking the majority into believing that power and wealth really matter.

Love, perhaps, isn't even strong enough a sentiment - I worship, yes, our individualism, embrace passionately our often spontaneous communal events and assemblages and protests, would sacrifice my own life to preserve the fundamental liberties and protected freedoms that, despite being created 200 years ago by a group of Educated Rich White Dudes in the hope of pacifying a rowdy people with the table scraps of a revolt against a British Crown, hold some unspeakable, transcendental truth more perfect than any god man can imagine.

While my government will never give us viable health care of its own corrupt volition, my countrymen will indeed fight amongst themselves but will also fight against whatever the government pitches as unfair, or too socialist, or too capitalist. They're once again marching to protest pretty much all forms of government "aid" - the ones that send volunteer soldiers into wars to liberate oil for our industry and the ones that steal from those same people to save "too-big-to-fail" industries that led to the wars in the first-place, the ones designed to pit a small business, mostly struggling mercantile class against the working class, working-class against the poor.

Regardless of party in charge and regardless of which version of Big Transnational Business pulls the strings, all the U.S. government can do is to be "pragmatic," and "realistic," and "powerful," while the people, despite differences in opinion between right and wrong, morality and sin, still instinctively resist the State's by-force pragmatism and realism, almost subconsciously.

Those in Power, who trade their humanity in the moment they join the ranks of State Influence, are not THE PEOPLE. Let's be clear here. They are THOSE POLITICIANS, the pentultimate global threat, the nemesis of liberty and rights, of collectivism and even dissident socialism, keepers of all property through coercion, dominion, and capital, possessed of the same I Am Legion phantom that Christ fought, that imprisoned Mandela, that killed King and Malcolm, raped the Chiapas, killed the Lakota, Sioux, the poets on the Great War's Western Front, the union boys through their Pinkertons, the slaves of Rome in arenas and our own former slaves on Southern plantations.

But THE PEOPLE, yes, through the chaos of many voices of many differing arguments, keep the authoritarian hordes of Big Corrupting Evil at bay, fight through both entrepreneurship and communism simultaneously, through both free trade and soup kitchens, church suppers and investments, protests and marches.

The citizens of this country are, indeed, a splendidly revolutionary bunch, with a proud history of both pacifism and violence against oppression - and almost all of that often built-up explosion of resistance is the result of some marginally democratic government that assumes that its power and wealth came be stripped at any time.

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, the United States is nothing more than 300 million people crowded in between seas and shining seas, with THE PEOPLE being nothing more than a euphemism for "WE have no fucking clue what unifies the Montana rancher to the New York labor organizer, We have no fucking clue how a Hawaiian hobo is really that much different than a New York reality televison celebutard, how a Harvard-educated, sherry-sipping lawyer is similar to a West Virginia pro-gun and pro-family moonshiner."

The greatest thing to dwell on now, the most important perhaps since the massive outrage of the 1960s, the rambunctiousness of the 1910s and 20s, is the return of that wondrous sense of a vast majority of often silent Americans asking themselves, together or in groups:

"What the fuck is wrong with our country? And how do we stop those who fucked it up so bad?"

God bless them all and may they first find answers for themselves before ever again accepting partisan loyalties so blindly the true exploiters of the world, the great Pale Rider Elite upon their Manufactured Consent Horses.

God bless every one. Even the atheistic academic Trotskyist and furled brow humanist faculty, even the pamphlet-wielding Trustafarian college kids, the religious nutjobs convinced some International Banking Illuminati is planning to set up Elderly Death Squads to stamp out Jesus and Free Will.

Dissent. Ain't it grand?

Now THAT, my friends, is change you can always count on in this here Land of the Free Spirit.

When Woody Guthrie wrote "This Machine Kills Fascists" on his guitar, he wasn't talking about government, our politicians or transnational CEOs, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, or Hollywood.

He was talking about us. Each and every one of us.

- # # # -


4 comments:

Ellie said...

I know what you mean.

Specifically in regards in Obama, I've been been troubled about the zeal with which he was initially followed.

Good to see we're back.

Unknown said...

If we're going to see the destruction of the two party system in our lifetimes, it's going to be soon.

The GOP is either going to continue to shrink if it continues its race-baiting, or split if it eschews it. And there's no way the Dems would stay in one piece if that happened. The signs of fissure are already showing. I just hope nothing comes along to spare them all.

Pia D said...

Kudos and kisses from Glasgow you sexy boy!!! This gives me hope for Yanks that you may change after all and finally break your cycle of fascist oppression. Great God your Democrats are worse that bloody "Labour" MPs who hate labour. Great essay that says what a lot of the world thinks already - glad you're catching up to the rest of of us - you are in majority cowboy:-P

A. Rivera said...

As Wombat suggests, it would be nice to see the two party system go the way of extinction. I don't know if I hold much hope for "We The People" though. While I despair over the clusterfuck that is the two party system and its bought and paid for politicians, I despair even more of over "The People" who instead of finally saying, "enough of this bullshit," simply keep electing them. I despair for "The People" who keep buying into the ignorance, misinformation, and just outright misuse of fear and thus keep those asshats in power. Seems our work as librarians to help dispel the ignorance is never done (or maybe I am just too idealistic, who knows?).

Great essay. Says a lot of things I have been thinking and wanting to say for a while.

Best, and keep on blogging.